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By Brian Hews
Publisher | Follow X
October 6, 2025
In 2018, Donald Trump’s tariffs on Chinese goods set off a retaliatory trade war that hammered America’s soybean farmers. Beijing, once the single largest buyer of U.S. soybeans, shut its doors, sending prices tumbling and forcing Washington to prop up growers with billions in emergency subsidies. Rural communities across the Midwest and South bore the cost of the standoff, watching years of steady exports collapse almost overnight.
Yet in 2024, when those same farmers returned to the polls, they gave Trump their votes all over again. Iowa, the nation’s leading soybean producer with nearly 600 million bushels annually, handed Trump 55.7 percent of the vote. Indiana and Nebraska, each producing over 300 million bushels, also went red. Missouri and Ohio, with about half a billion bushels between them, followed suit. Even Arkansas, with 166 million bushels, gave Trump more than 64 percent.
The political math is as confounding as it is revealing. These are voters who watched Chinese demand evaporate, who lived through bins full of unsold beans and rising farm bankruptcies, who remember the “market facilitation payments” that were the only thing standing between survival and foreclosure. Economically, they had every reason to bolt. Politically, they didn’t.
Why? For many, Trump’s cultural appeal and combative brand of politics outweighed pocketbook pain. Farm groups lobbied hard for trade relief and new agreements, yet at the ballot box, loyalty to Trump’s persona and conservative identity carried more weight than the balance sheet. As one soybean leader put it, “Farmers have been in Trump’s corner — now we need him to be in ours.”
But the irony is hard to ignore: Trump’s tariffs didn’t just hurt U.S. farmers, they handed their markets to his rivals. Brazil and Argentina rushed in to replace American soybeans in China, and now dominate sales once anchored in the Midwest. Industry experts warn that China’s new partnerships in South America are not temporary fixes but likely permanent realignments. For U.S. farmers, that means billions in business lost — probably for good.
And still, despite all of it, soybean country voted for Trump again, and all of us are paying for it.
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